


Shameless

by vivisextion



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age - Various Authors, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Gay Character, Coming Out, Coming of Age, Dorian in Drag, Drag Queens, Found Family, Gay Pride, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, LGBTQ Character of Color, LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Pride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 18:27:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19278952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivisextion/pseuds/vivisextion
Summary: Dorian's life story as a gay man.Because the closet can only stop you from being seen. It is not shame-proof. When you soak a child in shame, they cannot develop the neurological pathways that carry thought of self-worth. Self-hatred is only ever a seed planted from outside in. But when you do that to a child, it becomes a weed so thick, and it grows so fast, the child doesn’t know any different. It becomes as natural as gravity.- Hannah Gadsby, Nanette





	Shameless

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by Eugene Lee Yang's beautiful [coming out video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpipLfMiaYU) It resonated a lot with me as a gay Asian man. I decided to celebrate Dorian this Pride month, and some of the experiences you see here are my own. As always, I tried to reference canon (particularly his early life) as much as possible.

It starts earlier than Dorian can even remember, with parents who detest each other, and no siblings to deflect the abuse to.

Don’t do this. Don’t do that. You are the pride of House Pavus. Act like it.

It doesn’t feel like pride, when he learns to walk like his mother, hips swaying in a way that feels strangely natural, and his father screams at him to stand straight. It doesn’t feel like pride, when he wraps a tablecloth around his hips and twirls around his room, and his mother snatches it from him, scolding him for reasons neither he nor she understands. It doesn’t feel like pride, when he finds one of Aquinea’s tubes of Orlesian rouge, daubing it on his lips, which earns him the worst beating of his short life so far.

It doesn’t feel like pride. But Dorian doesn’t have a word for it yet.

* * *

Dorian discovers his own magic, and he performs it with a flourish he learns from his mother’s graceful body movements, her flowing motions. He takes that with him, when he is sent away to the Circle of Magi at Carastes, by parents who are glad to see the back of him.

When he is nine, he holds hands with another boy, both of them far away from home and needing a friend. Another magister’s son sees this and calls him a foul name, before he is old enough to even understand sexuality. But he knows what it means and how horrid it is, and he curses the boy with all his graceful, flowing might, hurling bright orange fire at him. They called it a duel, implying that he had not been minding his own business when the bully had descended upon him.

They are only children, and already it has begun. One child soaked in shame, and another taught how to hate.

Dorian never sees that boy again.

It happens again at the next Circle. And the next. He is a little too soft, a little too effeminate, and they can see it. Each time, he defends himself, and is expelled for his trouble. A punishment for the price of being himself. He learns early on that the world is against him, even in a society where his magic is celebrated, not persecuted. Dorian pays dearly for this lesson he does not want to learn.

Now he knows what this feels like. It feels like shame.

* * *

Dorian is a teenager now, flourishing in a different way, trying to be himself in a place that tells him he is wrong, and often. His parents don’t know what to do with him. In his desperation to fix his aberrant son, Halward sends him to the Order of Argent straighten him out, a painfully Andrastian school with strict, harsh discipline. Halward hasn’t managed to beat it out of Dorian, and sends his son there in the hopes that the Chantry sisters will do it for him.

It’s worse than any Circle he’s been to. There is no hand-holding here. Dorian is afraid to even let his gaze linger on a boy for too long, at first. He is afraid of what they will do to him, and he has been taught fear well.

Dorian tries to fit in, tries to befriend girls, even court them. As much as a religious institution will allow, anyway. He is the consummate gentleman, a fine suitor. He brings them flowers, leaves charming notes.

He can fool the others, as the Chantry sisters nod and smile. But he cannot fool himself.

There is a pretty boy, in the library, when he studies. Dorian notices him, has done in the past. This time, the boy pauses between the stacks, to smile at Dorian. He doesn’t know what that smile means. Dorian has felt the eyes of the girls on him, but they don’t give him butterflies in his stomach the way the pretty boy smiling back at him does. Later on, Cole would dig up this memory, of the boy and his smile, framed by the yellow, late afternoon sun through the high, arched windows of the library. _Rilienus, skin tan like fine whiskey, cheekbones shaded, lips curl when he smiles._

In that moment, Dorian had wanted nothing more than to press a soft, chaste kiss to those lips. _He would have said yes._

Shame becomes as natural to him as magic. He wonders how it is possible to live like this. He has been told this is wrong so often he’s started to believe it, but that doesn’t stop him wanting. If they are caught, it would be the end, just as it had been in the Circle. He would never see the smiling boy again.

Dorian decides to be one step ahead of them, and runs away without so much as a backward glance.

* * *

Dorian runs away to the elven slums, thinking they are people who understand what it is to be hunted for who they are, for things they cannot change. He ends up in a house of ill repute, an inn with stone walls, wanting to drink his troubles away, figuring this is a fitting setting for his downward spiral. He sees a male elf dancing in a long skirt. The elf is painted for the Creators, with a long flowing mane of red hair, his body moving in graceful, flowing curves to vibrant music.

 _Surely that’s a man_ , Dorian scoffs to himself, the young adult who thinks he knows everything. _Who does he think he’s fooling?_

Then he learns that they are fooling no one. This is who they are, loud and proud. Humbled, he approaches the nice lady as she comes off the stage.

“Will you teach me?” Dorian asks shyly.

“Of course, sweetheart,” and the lady pulls him to her dressing room. In front of a large mirror, she hands him a tube of Orlesian rouge, and shows him how to paint it on his lips.

* * *

Dorian learns a few things about the art of drag and the story of life from his loving mentor. He calls her mother, in the elvhen tongue, in a way he has never done for the icy, distant woman of his boyhood. This inn with stone walls is the only place he has ever thought of as home. The other dancing girls and boys become family to him. Mamae lets him sleep in her little back room, and he is more than willing to clean tables and wash dishes for the privilege of belonging. She even teaches him this dance which involves ten silk scarves. It always drives the crowd wild.

Dorian learns to paint his own face and dance in a skirt, with help from Mamae and the others. She picks a deep, emerald green dress from her own wardrobe for him, to complement his dusky skin tone. He has never felt more alive, the day he twirls around the tavern for the first time, like he had done so long ago in his room, dancing around clapping patrons. But this time, there is no mother to snatch anything from him, only one that cheers him on.

Later on, as the others are performing, he takes the dress off. It is time to go back to a man’s wardrobe, but he leaves the rouge on. It suits him. Mamae tells him so.

Then they go back out to dance with the patrons. Men dance with men and women dance with women, in this house. Dorian has never felt more at home.

That night, he twirls his way into the arms of a pretty boy, even if it isn’t Rilienus. And for a night, they dance together, cheeks pink with wine and puppy love. Before he leaves, the boy kisses him on his ruby red lips. His first kiss.

Mamae tells him there is no shame in wanting to kiss boys. He goes to bed that night, starstruck, with a glimmer of hope in his chest.

* * *

In the safety of his new home, he forgets how cruel the world outside is.

One day, he walks outside the inn, rouge still on his lips. He wears it so often he forgets it is there. But strangers do not. These same strangers beat him mercilessly for who he is, call him ugly names. Only when his hands come alight with blue fire do they run away. He burns an entire street black with his anger.

He collapses in the street, drained of mana, his mouth filling with blood, painting his lips ruby red. He crawls back towards home on his belly, but before he can make it a few paces, a magister stands before him. This is the day he meets his saviour, Alexius, who saw his prowess, even when he’d been beaten to the ground with blood on his face. Alexius offers him a life as an apprentice, without having to be under the yoke of the Chantry. It’s good enough for Dorian.

Mamae cries when he tells her he’s leaving. Mamae makes him promise to return. He insists he will, one day. He’s going to make her proud.

Later, when he flees the Imperium, he remembers this promise and weeps.

* * *

Dorian leaves Alexius, just like he leaves Mamae. He is now a fully-fledged enchanter and a well-heeled scion, but he doesn’t want to be that for a while. So Dorian throws himself headlong into a life of debauchery, the kind he never would have dreamed of as a young boy in the Circle. He is free now, or so he thinks. He can have all the wine he can drink and all the pretty boys he can seduce. He’s an adult, after all.

But he’s an adult in the Imperium, and the adult son of House Pavus. He forgets this with enough wine, forgets it even more so when he falls into the bed of Lord Ulio Abrexis’ son. There, the world fades away to just the two of them. The young lad is willing and eager to please, with long, beautiful limbs that wrap around Dorian to pull him closer. Dorian kisses him as much as he wants, and adores the sweet sound of his gasps as those kisses travel lower, below his belly. He makes Dorian feel powerful, when he comes undone under the mage’s clever hands.

His father, however, hasn’t forgotten. Halward sends a band of ruffians to abduct him from that very bed, on a night he has let his guard down long enough for someone to drug his wine.

Dorian never sees that boy again, either.

Dorian wakes up with the mother of all hangovers in the hold of a ship bound for a place he never called home. Then he is a prisoner in that house again, the same way he was a prisoner in it as a child. Not much has changed there. It isn’t fair. And it gets worse.

He gets betrothed to a woman. He barely remembers her name, now. They meet once, only once. They loathe each other on sight, the way his mother and father had. A proud family tradition. They want him to keep up appearances, resign himself to a life of unhappiness, but he does not go quietly. He is not one to be quiet. He spits vitriol at everyone, as a caged animal will.

A sympathetic elf cook brings the prisoner his food. Dorian remembers her fondly from his boyhood. She had always liked him. He used to go down to the kitchens to talk to her, when no one else would. She was the only person in that big, lonely house who never made him feel as though he were a chore to spend time with. She reveals what his father is planning. A blood magic ritual, to change his very nature. The resort of a weak mind, indeed.

But she loves him enough to swap the water in his tumbler for lyrium potion, giving him enough power to escape. He does, running into the countryside, with only the clothes on his back and not a sovereign to his name. He vows never to return to the house that isn’t a home.

* * *

Dorian flees south and joins the Inquisition, because he knows thwarting Alexius is the way to redeem himself. After all, he’d contributed to that research, and it seems only right. Alexius falls from grace, and hard. And then after that, what better way to spite his homeland and what it represents than to keep helping the Inquisition?

There, he meets a Qunari who is more of a gentleman than he ever expected, far more than some of the human soldiers who sneer at his effeminate ways. Dorian ignores them, because he refuses to trade away parts of himself to please others any more. He’s paid too much of a price for that lesson. He will speak however he likes, walk with a natural sway in his hips, and perfume himself with scented oils. His nails are every colour of the rainbow from week to week, his dress more and more flamboyant. Dorian understands now that he has a right to take up space in this world, even if it hates him. He does a good job of hiding the seeds of self-hatred sown in him by so many others with his dazzling wit, his effusive charm.

Dorian also meets Sera, who is like him. And as much as they don’t see eye to eye, he admires how unapologetically herself she is, in a way he has always been frightened to truly be.

He begrudgingly befriends the Iron Bull. The Qunari matches Dorian’s wit with his own, and they make each other laugh. Bull is easy to be around, and will take a fair amount of good-natured ribbing.

For a long time, Dorian ignores the Qunari’s advances. Maker knows the man has slept with half of Thedas and has enough bedmates to keep him busy until the next Age. So he plays hard to get. But over time, the number of bedmates thins out, until they are no more. Dorian, puzzled, asks him why. He gets no answer, but the Qunari holds his hand, and the world doesn’t stop. Dorian is almost stunned when no one hurls a fireball at them.

Then Bull invites Dorian to fall into his bed, in a soft, sincere voice. Dorian follows him back to his room, without a snappy retort for once. It is the first time he’s lain with anyone since, well. He tries to forget that, and the Iron Bull’s large, gentle hands help, warm and soothing on his back, his caresses light and easy when they coax his thighs apart. He had not known what is was to be made love to, until that night.

Bull is a generous lover, and then some. When they’re finished, neither of them leave. He lets the Qunari pull him into his chest, and feels safer than he’s ever been with anyone. They talk for hours, about anything and everything. Dorian gets to kiss Bull as much as he likes, and does so shamelessly.

Bull looks at him like he’s something precious. No one, apart from perhaps Mamae, had ever looked at him like that. It will be a while before Dorian believes it.

Bull drifts off with Dorian still in his arms. Dorian wants to slink out before the sun rises, but something in Bull’s sleepy, vulnerable expression changes his mind.

Dorian sees this man again, and again, and again.

Dorian is too old and too bitter now to hide his own flame, but at his core is a boy who dares not love who he wants to love. And the Qunari accepts this. The Iron Bull accepts Dorian, and the child inside him who has been soaked in shame ever since he could remember. There are nights he weeps, sometimes alone, sometimes with his companion, because he did not think he ever deserved this. His younger, Circle-bound self did not even think it possible, to know the love of another man like this.

And every time, Bull is there to remind him that he does deserve love, holding him gently to his chest and patting his wet cheeks. It is hard to wipe away so many years of shame, but together they try. Bull has similar shame of his own that Dorian is only too happy to help erase.

It is foolish in such times, but they both hope for more, and are stunned when they get it. Still, Dorian does not kiss Bull in public, afraid of the repercussions, even though he knows he’s in the South now. Afraid his father will somehow pull him from Bull’s bed, the way he had been dragged from the Abrexis boy. Bull notices. Dorian notices Bull noticing, and feels his heart sink. But this man and his infinite patience reassures him with four simple words, and means it.

“It’s okay. You’re okay.”

One day, Dorian will be braver. One day, he will kiss Bull in front of everyone.

* * *

“I know my son.”

The words sting more than Dorian expects. He’d barely spent half his childhood with the man!

He is guarded with the Inquisitor at first, but learns that he needn’t have been. Dorian’s still surprised at the love and kindness these people show him, even if his first instinct is to snap at them in self-defense sometimes. That is what the world that hates him has taught him to do. But the Inquisitor proves to be a true friend through this ordeal, and as he learns, one who prefers the company of both men and women. His friend reminds him that here, with the Inquisition, he does not have to live a lie. Dorian is free to be himself in Skyhold.

Later, Bull would coax this out of him over some truly eyebrow-searing dragon piss. Dorian suspects the Inquisitor might have a hand in that, because Bull looks far too sympathetic, even before Dorian sits down for a drink. Dorian tells him, only because Bull knows what it’s like to be shunned by people he should have been able to call family. Dorian might have cried into his chest, too. It feels good to let it out. Bull wipes away the tears with one gentle thumb, his large hand big enough to cradle the side of Dorian’s face. Bull smiles back when Dorian manages a watery little grin and declares plans to wear an even more bejeweled outfit the next day.

Bit by bit, the weight in his chest from decades of hurt starts to dissipate. But the damage has been done, and Dorian will never forgive Magister Halward.

* * *

They all return to Skyhold, victorious. Corypheus is fast becoming a distant memory, especially given the amount of alcohol they’re all imbibing. And they deserve it.

Dorian hasn’t had that much, but he has had enough that he can blame what he’s about to do next on the wine. In his room, he retrieves a tube of Orlesian rouge Vivienne gave him, looks in the mirror and paints it on his lips with practiced ease. He pulls on his good boots, the ones with enough heel to change the way he walks. He wears rich, royal purple, since it’s always looked lovely with his skin. Then he saunters back down to the tavern where everyone is making merry, the sway in his hips more confident than ever.

Mamae would be so proud.

Sera passes him on the way in. She cackles, but it’s with him, not at him.

“All tarted up for Bull, are we?” she calls.

“You bet your last arrow I am, darling,” he coos back.

He walks in. He has a walk that makes the men pay attention and the women jealous. Heads turn, mainly the Chargers, who are the most raucously drunk. Krem spots him first and lets out a loud wolf-whistle. Bull looks around, only to see Dorian sashaying over to where he’s seated, lips as red as the blood of the dragon they slaughtered only hours ago. It’s enough to get Bull going already. Taarsidath-an halsaam, indeed.

Dorian stops between Bull’s spread thighs, large as tree trunks. Then he smirks, and leans over to plant a big, red kiss over Bull’s cheek.

Bull looks starstruck. The ruby red mark is bright against his cheek, looking like _vitaar,_ his war paint. The Chargers hoot and holler wildly, punching their leader in the arm in a good-natured way. There’s a dopey smile on the Qunari’s face that Dorian is quite enjoying. He enjoys it even more when Bull pulls him into his lap with strong arms and growls in his ear that he looks ever so pretty with his lips red like that, and wouldn’t they look prettier around some other part of him?

(They did, of course. The rouge ended up all over Bull’s lower half. Dorian left his boots on.)

Dorian laughs, sitting the way Mamae taught him, with his legs crossed over the knee. He feels like a tavern wench perched on Bull’s lap, the man’s thick arm around his waist, keeping him safe. He tilts his face up to look at Bull, a man who loves him for who he is. Here, there is no one to call him names, no one to beat him bloody, for loving this man back.

Bull smiles, leaning in to kiss Dorian, never mind that his own lips come away tinged with red. His large hand is gentle on Dorian’s cheek, trailing down his neck to cup it.

Dorian kisses back. He isn’t afraid anymore. After all, they’d faced so much worse that day. He’s even brave enough to hop off and offer his hand to Bull when the bard strikes up a lively tune. Together, they twirl around the room, laughing, dancing cheek to cheek.

* * *

When all the hubbub dies down, Dorian and Bull get to leave long enough to make a trip to Minrathous. He’d asked Bull to accompany him, and Bull wanted to know why. Dorian tells him he has a promise to keep. Bull doesn’t question him any further. That man knows the weight of a promise.

It is difficult to lay low, since they are both a little conspicuous. But they make it to the elven slums, with Bull growing more curious by the minute. Dorian finds that inn with the stone walls still standing, and breathes a sigh of relief. He walks in, and finds an elf, painted for the Creators, her red wig styled and pinned up. Her long, indigo-dyed skirt reaches the floor, and it flows like water around her legs when she stands, mouth agape and eyes wide.

“Mamae? I’m home. There’s someone I want you to meet…”

**Author's Note:**

> If you look closely, you'll find all the colours of the rainbow and a reference to Stonewall.


End file.
